As government officials and political activists are becoming increasingly aware, international nonprofit agencies have an important political dimension: although not self-serving, these private voluntary organizations (PVOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seek social changes of which many of their financial contributors are unaware. As PVOs and NGOs receive increasing subsidies from their home governments in the United States, Canada, and Europe, they are moving away from short-term relief commitments in developing countries and toward longer-term goals in health, education, training, and small-scale production. Showing that European and Canadian NGOs focus more on political change as part of new development efforts than do their U.S. counterparts, Brian Smith presents the first major comparative study of the political aspect of PVOs and NGOs. Smith emphasizes the paradoxes in the private-aid system, both in the societies that send aid and in those that receive it. Pointing out that international nonprofit agencies are in some instances openly critical of nation-state interests, he asks how these agencies can function in a foreign-aid network intended as a support for those same interests. He concludes that compromises throughout the private-aid networkand some secrecymake it possible for institutions with different agendas to work together. In the future, however, serious conflicts may develop with donors and nation states.

Originally published in 1990.

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First discovered in 1976, and long regarded as an easily manageable virus affecting isolated rural communities, Ebola rocketed to world prominence in 2014 as a deadly epidemic swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in West Africa. Thousands of people died as the extraordinarily contagious disease spread rapidly from villages to urban centres. Initial quarantine responses proved often too little and too late, and the medical infrastructure of the affected countries struggled to cope. By August 2014, several months after the start of the outbreak, the WHO declared the epidemic a public health emergency and international aid teams and volunteers began to pour in. But halting the epidemic proved to be hugely challenging, not only in terms of the practicalities of dealing with the sheer numbers of patients carrying the highly infectious virus, but in dealing with social and cultural barriers. The author, Dorothy Crawford, visited Sierra Leone while the epidemic was ongoing and met with those on the frontline in the fight against the virus. In Ebola Crawford combines personal accounts from these brave medical workers with the latest scientific reports to tell the story of the epidemic as it unfolded, and how it has changed our understanding of the virus. She looks at its origin and spread, the international response, and its devastating legacy to the health of those living in the three worst affected countries. She describes the efforts to prevent international spread, the treatment options for Ebola, including the drug and vaccine trials that eventually got underway in 2015, and the sensitive issue of running trials of experimental therapies during a lethal epidemic. Our understanding of the Ebola virus continues to develop as long-term health problems and complications following recovery from the disease are being identified. Epidemics of Ebola or other dangerous microbes will continue to threaten the world regularly. Already concerns have been raised by the possible impact of the Zika virus. What lessons have been learnt from Ebola? How, asks Crawford, might we prevent a repeat of the awful suffering seen in 2014-16?

Much like the large commercial companies, most humanitarian aid organisations now have departments specifically dedicated to protecting the security of their personnel and assets. The management of humanitarian security has gradually become the business of professionals who develop data collection systems, standardized procedures, norms, and training meant to prevent and manage risks. A large majority of aid agencies and security experts see these developments as inevitable -- all the more so because of quantitative studies and media reports concluding that the dangers to which aid workers are today exposed are completely unprecedented. Yet, this trend towards professionalisation is also raising questions within aid organisations, MSF included. Can insecurity be measured by scientific means and managed through norms and protocols? How does the professionalisation of security affect the balance of power between field and headquarters, volunteers and the institution that employs them? What is its impact on the implementation of humanitarian organizations' social mission? Are there alternatives to the prevailing security model(s) derived from the corporate world?Building on MSF's experience and observations of the aid world by academics and practitioners, the authors of this book look at the drivers of the professionalization of humanitarian security and its impact on humanitarian practices, with a specific focus on Syria, CAR and kidnapping in the Caucasus.

James Maskalyk set out for the contested border town of Abyei, Sudan, in 2007. The newest Medicins Sans Frontieres' doctor in the field, he arrived with only his training, full of desire to understand this most desperate part of the world. He returned home six months later profoundly affected by the experience. Six Months in Sudan is an illuminating and affecting account of saving lives in one of the most harrowing and dangerous places on Earth.

The magnitude of refugees movements in the Third World, widely perceived as an unprecedented crisis, has generated widespread concern in the West. This concern reveals itself as an ambiguous mixture of heartfelt compassion for the plight of the unfortunates cast adrift and a diffuse fear that they will come "pouring in." In this comprehensive study, the authors examine the refugee flows originating in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and suggest how a better understanding of this phenomenon can be used by the international community to assist those in greatest need. Reviewing the history of refugee movements in the West, they show how their formation and the fate of endangered populations have also been shaped by the partisan objectives of receiving countries. They survey the kinds of social conflicts characteristic of different regions of the Third World and the ways refugees and refugee policy are made to serve broader political purposes.

For those so-minded, the aftermath of an earthquake presents opportunities to intervene. Thus, in Gujarat, following the disaster of 2001, leaders were deposed, proletariats created, religious fundamentalism incubated, the state restructured, and industrial capital- ism expanded exponentially. Rather than gazing in at those struggling in the ruins, as is commonplace in the literature, this book looks out from the affected region at those who came to intervene. Based on extensive research amid the dust and noise of re- construction, the author focuses on the survivors and their interactions with death, history, and with those who came to use the shock of disaster to change the order of things. Edward Simpson takes us deep into the experience of surviving a 'natural' disaster. We see a society in mourning, further alienated by manufactured conditions of uncertainty and absurdity. We witness arguments about the past. What was important? What should be preserved? Was modernisation the cause of the disaster or the antidote? As people were putting things back together, they also knew that future earthquakes were inevitable. How did they learn to live with this terrible truth? How have people in other times and places come to terms with the promise of another earthquake, knowing that things will fall apart again?